


Shadow Games

by ArwenLalaith



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Gen, Paranormal, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-24
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-05-15 22:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 22,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5802313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLalaith/pseuds/ArwenLalaith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years old and reeling from the aftermath of her abortion, Emily finds herself wandering too far down a dark path and something doesn't want to let her go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Matthew was high as a kite, that much was clear to her. Emily was fairly sure that was the only reason he had tagged along with her that night. He had once been a good God-fearing Catholic and whatever issues he might now have with the Church's teachings (all her fault, the voice at the back of her head reminded), he never missed an opportunity to remind her that she shouldn't mess around with things she didn't understand.

"Are you coming or not?" she asked, stopping and turning once she realized that he was no longer following.

"There's no moon tonight," he remarked off-handedly, as if he hadn't really heard her. "I think it's bad luck."

"Matthew, come on," she groaned, backtracking and grabbing his arm and tugging him along with her. "I want to get in and out of there before it gets too early and people start waking up."

Outside the apartment building, the two teenagers crouched down out of view of the doorman working the night shift. "Do you remember what you're supposed to do, Matty?" Emily asked, then repeated his name a few time to make sure he was listening. He stared blankly at her for a few moments, so she sighed and repeated the instructions. "If I'm not back here in twenty minutes, call me. I'm not sure if my phone will work on the Other Side, but time doesn't work the same and I don't want to stay too long."

"Twenty minutes," he echoed.

Then, thinking better of just leaving it to his memory, she snatched his phone from his pocket and set an alarm to go off in twenty minutes. She shrugged off her coat and dug around in her pocket for the black tourmaline stone she'd bought, just in case.

Matthew grabbed her hand and pressed something cold into her palm. "Take it with you, just in case."

She closed her fingers around the object and recognized the shape as being that of his rosary, complete with a large silver cross. Regardless of whether or not she believed in God and his ability to protect her anymore, Matthew wasn't taking any chances. She smiled softly at him and kissed his cheek.

The lobby was eerily silent when Emily entered as if it were sitting vigil, just waiting for what she was about to do. The doorman was either too busy reading to notice her or she looked as if she belonged because he made no attempt to stop her.

There were two identical elevators and she was suddenly struck with the fear that she wouldn't remember which to get back on to return because the instructions had been exceedingly clear that she needed to make the return journey on the same elevator. She fished around in the pocket of her jeans for something to write with, emerging with a tube of lipstick that she used to print 'LEFT' on the back of her hand to remind herself.

With one last sweeping glance of the lobby to make sure she was alone, she got on the left elevator and with a deep breath, pressed the button for the fourth floor.

For reasons she couldn't pinpoint, her nerves started jangling the further she got through the sequence of floors, like the air around her was electrically charged, making her hair stand on end. On the fifth floor, the doors shuddered open as if they were slightly off their tracks and Emily had to bite back a scream as the girl got onto the elevator like the instructions had promised.

Deliberately training her eyes on the buttons to avoid looking at her, Emily tried to make herself seem as small as possible as if that would prevent the girl from noticing her. The girl said nothing, didn't say what floor she wanted to go to, so Emily was fairly sure she wasn't one of the building's residents who'd stumbled into her ritual. It felt as if there were eyes trained on her, staring into her very soul...Emily wasn't even sure if the girl had eyes, all she could see from the corner of her eyes was a tattered white dress that looked stained with rust (God, she hoped that was a rust stain) and long choppy dark hair.

With a trembling finger, Emily pressed the button for the first floor, only to have the elevator immediately start ascending. The girl in the elevator with her started to hum a tune that was naggingly familiar, but she was unable to place it. The sound made a shiver travel along her spine like ice water.

At the tenth floor, the elevator stopped and Emily found herself frozen in place. She'd set out with the intention of exploring the Other Side once she got there, but now her legs seemed disconnected from her brain and she couldn't will herself to take even a single step.

The burning feeling of the girl's gaze seemed to get more intense and Emily wasn't sure if she was imagining the feeling of breath fluttering against the back of her neck, but the idea of the girl being right behind her suddenly catapulted her forward with the violence of having been pushed.

Stepping out of the elevator onto the dark floor felt like having a damp blanket thrown over her head.

"Where are you going, Emily?" a voice asked from the elevator and she jumped, her heart hammering from somewhere in her throat. She sprinted halfway down the hallway to put some distance between herself and the girl.

She clenched her fist tighter around the stone and the rosary, feeling the edges digging into the flesh of her palm. She told herself that nothing could hurt her as long as she had those protection objects in her possession.

The hallway looked like she imagined the halls in the building normally looked, except that there were no lights anywhere and all the doors leading off the hall seemed to be rusted shut like no one had tried opening them for decades.

The air was oppressively warm and humid and seemed to be actively clinging to her. She wondered how long she'd been there, whether Matthew would call her soon, but she was afraid of looking at her cell phone and seeing that it wasn't working.

There was a small window at the end of the hall, blackened with grime and age, light from the streetlamps filtered through it making a mottled pattern on the floor below it. Emily was suddenly filled with an irresistible urge to open the window and breathe in something other than the cloistering wet air around her.

As she got closer to it, the glowing red cross became visible, shining like a beacon in the otherwise dark world she'd found herself in. It seemed to call to her like a siren – she wanted to get as close to it as she could, figure out where it was so that she could touch it. The need grew inside her until it was all she could think about.

The first sound other than her breathing and dull footsteps was a jarring and rapid knocking behind one of the rusted apartment doors. It came so suddenly out of the heavy silence that it broke Emily out of her trance with a start and she tripped over her own feet, falling into a door on the other side.

That door immediately began to rattle too, like something on the other side sensed she was there and wanted to get to her. She thought she heard something like nails scratching on the wood and she screamed, scrambling to right herself and get as far from the door as possible.

Gasping for air, she crawled along the carpeted floor for a few moments until she could find her feet and start running. Each door she passed started to rattle as something banged on them and she thought she heard moaning behind a few. The instructions had said that she would know she had completed the ritual successfully because she would be the only human on the Other Side... _which begged the question: what was on the other side of the doors?_

She clutched the objects in her fist so tightly it was painful and she crossed herself on impulse. It was taking far longer to get back to the elevator than it should have, no matter how fast she ran, and the fear that she would never reach them started gnawing at her.

Sweat was running uncomfortably along her spine when she reached them and she stabbed at the down button repeatedly, the noise surrounding her like a dull roar and the voice in her head kept telling her that maybe Matthew had been right after all.

She fought back the tears pricking at her eyes as she waited for the elevator, stabbing at the button again every few seconds. It shouldn't have taken so long to travel ten floors in the middle of the night. Surely the apartment doors, no matter how rusted, couldn't hold against such violent pounding for much longer and she didn't want to be around when they gave way...

When the elevator doors finally lurched open, she practically spilled into the car and backed herself into the corner as she waited for the doors to close her off from wherever the hell she was. Later, she would never know how she had the presence of mind to follow the correct order of floors for the return journey.

Landing at the lobby, she was sure she'd never been so relieved in her entire life. As she moved to step out onto the polished marble, something inside of her stalled. She looked up to the clock mounted on the far wall and she audibly gasped. The hands were ticking back and forth between 3:13 and 3:45 in random leaps and stalls.

She stumbled back into the relative safety of the elevator as the realization that something was very wrong washed over her. The doorman, still sitting with his back to the elevators, turned suddenly and Emily had to clap a hand over her mouth to hold in the scream and his eyes – completely black and unnervingly large – landed on her. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out as his mouth continued to yawn open, wider and wider, revealing only darkness.

Something was trying to keep her here.

That was the thought that repeated inside her head as she tried to remember if she'd done the sequence wrong. Bile was burning the back of her throat and she whispered, "No, no, no, no..." over and over again as she pressed the buttons again.

She landed on the ground floor again and crossed herself one more time, hoping that she had returned to her realm, but not quite daring to look on the off chance that she hadn't. The ringing of her phone started suddenly and she started trembling all over again, having completely forgotten about it.

The battery was almost completely drained, even though it had been fully charged when she'd left home earlier. She had three missed calls and seventeen text messages, all from Matthew.

"Emily, what the fuck!?" he practically shouted into the phone when she answered.

"What?" she asked, genuinely confused.

"You've been gone like an hour! I thought I was going to find you dead in one of the hallways!"

"An hour?" she repeated breathlessly. This time everything in the lobby seemed to be correct, so she finally willed herself to exit the elevator.

"You promised you'd only be twenty minutes," he reminded her. "If my parents notice I'm gone..."

She dropped herself on the ground next to him before he could finish and wrapped her arms around him, squeezing him tighter than she'd ever hugged anyone before.

"Em, what happened?" he asked, struggling to get the words out around her embrace. She shook her head in response, feeling the tears back in her eyes. "Em, you have to stop this..."


	2. Chapter 2

_Two Weeks Earlier_

Emily awoke with a start, air burning her lungs on the way down as she panted, her heart hammering in her chest like a war drum. She brushed her sweaty bangs off her forehead where they clung. The sheets on her bed had tangled themselves around her legs as she'd thrashed during her dream.

She couldn't remember what she'd dreamed about, all she knew was the overwhelming certainty she'd woken with that the phone was ready to be answered. It had been three days since she'd made the outbound call and she had been starting to worry she wasn't going to get a response.

The clock beside her bed said that it was well after two in the morning, but she could still hear the sounds of her mother on the phone from somewhere below her.

Tiptoeing across the floor so as not to let her mother know she was awake, Emily situated herself on the floor of her closet next to the deceptively labelled box that contained the clothes her mother didn't want her wearing. It was a tight fit, crammed between the box and the tiered shelf that held her shoes, clothes hanging over her around her head like unmatched curtains, and she had to fold her knees up under her chin in order to get the door closed most of the way.

The make-shift telephone sat at her feet unopened. She breathed a sigh of relief. The instructions hadn't been clear on what exactly would happen if she found the shoebox open, other than that it was bad. The paper cup hadn't been knocked over, which was also a good sign, although something twisted in her gut with the feeling that it wasn't in the exact position she'd left it.

The desire to hear her unborn child speak to her was too strong for her to resist answering the phone, so she swallowed down the worry and told herself she was imagining things.

She wasn't sure what to expect when she held the paper cup to her ear, feeling more than a little foolish. It probably wasn't even real anyway; she'd been telling herself that since John had told her about playing the game in juvie. She couldn't hear anything at first – just the sound of her mother's demanding voice, presumably dealing with some kind of crisis at the Embassy. Even though she'd almost completely talked herself into believing this all to be some kind of joke, she couldn't help the pang of disappointment.

She was on the verge of giving up and going back to bed when the crying started suddenly, making icy fear plummet into her stomach. It wasn't the kind of crying made by a brand new baby, but the kind of cries a toddler would make. She didn't know why she was afraid.

She flattened her hand against the other ear to block out the sounds coming up through the floor and was able to make out a voice from among the wailing. "Mommy!" A little voice sobbed into her ear as if its very heart were breaking. "Mommy...Mommy, please!"

Emily bit down on her lip to keep any sound from escaping and being heard by her mother's bat-like hearing. If the Ambassador were to find out what she was doing, she'd likely be grounded into the next century. Having grown up in a strict Catholic household, her mother had expressly forbidden Ouija boards and all things dark and demonic. The idea of Emily contacting the spirit of her dead baby would likely cause her mother a heart attack (especially since she still didn't know Emily had been pregnant in the first place).

"Mommy, help me!" the small voice begged, "Help me, please!"

Emily couldn't help the tortured sob that erupted. "I'm sorry..." she whispered, all thoughts of the rules long since forgotten as she listened to her child's heart-rending cries.

The voice changed suddenly as the last syllable fell from her lips. The weeping stopped immediately, replaced instead with mocking laughter. Not the giggle of a small child, but the kind of other-worldly laugh that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

Her ear started to tingle as if invisible bugs were crawling over and inside it. She yanked the on the thread connecting the paper cup to the shoebox until it snapped, crushing the cup in the process. The laughter continued in her head.

Fear burning through her chest, she took the nearby scissors and cut the thread into four pieces to be sure the connection was severed. Still the laughter continued in her head.

Tears streamed down her face as she pulled her knees against her chest, fear keeping her paralyzed on the floor of the closet. She sunk her teeth into the skin of her knee, afraid that if she let it, the laughter would come spilling out of her head and out of her mouth.


	3. Chapter 3

One Week Earlier

John had dropped himself unceremoniously into one of the chairs she'd set in the room and refused to help with further set up.

Emily was silently fuming, stopping every once in awhile to shoot him an irritated look. She hadn't even wanted him here in the first place, but she needed a second person for the ritual and no matter how much she begged and pleaded, Matthew had refused to participate.

She'd been shaken up for several days after the shoebox telephone incident, but after a little research, she'd figured that it had simply been a wrong number and whatever spirit she'd contacted was trying to mess with her head. Her research had then lead her to discovering a variety of games and rituals exploring the spirit world and a mixture of rebelliousness, curiosity, and desperation brought her here.

"Hold this," she demanded, shoving a flashlight into John's hands. He immediately proceeded to shine the light directly into her eyes and laugh.

Emily rolled her eyes at his childishness and, not for the first time, wondered what exactly had been going on in her mind when she decided to sleep with him. _Best not to look under that rock..._

She returned to positioning the mirror, then sat down to check the view, before adjusting the mirror once more.

"Do you remember what you're supposed to do?" she asked him pointedly as he continued to turn the flashlight on and off, the strobe-light effect making her a little dizzy.

"I'm ghost bait," he said with a shit-eating grin. The smirk fell abruptly off his face when he saw her very unamused expression. "I say the magic words and wait for the ghost to show up," he amended.

"And what are you _not_ going to do?"

"I'm not going to turn around or look at anything other than the mirror."

" _And_?" she pressed.

"And what?" John asked, looking blank.

"And you're not going to talk to her." Her expression was frighteningly serious.

"Why not?" he challenged, mostly because he enjoyed irritating her.

Emily rolled her eyes. "I don't need you pissing off a potentially dangerous supernatural being that we're locked in a room with."

He shrugged. "You say that like it's a common occurrence."

Emily reached into her bag and pulled out the offering to attract the spirit – a plastic unicorn figurine – and set it on the table, in view of the mirror. The instructions hadn't specified what kind of toys were preferred, but she figured what kind of seven year old girl didn't like unicorns? She'd had a whole bedroom full of horse and unicorn toys at that age.

Finally prepared, she turned off the lights and settled into the chair next to John and took a moment to breathe out her tension and nerves. "Alright, on the count of three..." She counted down on her fingers and together, they announced to the room at large, "We want to play Charlotte's Web."

She expected to be waiting for a long time before Charlotte decided to show up, if she appeared at all. She wasn't particularly anxious about this ritual, but a part of her was afraid that the spirit would know what she'd done to her baby and be afraid of her. She knew how irrational that was, but she just couldn't shake the thought.

She was surprised then when she caught movement at the edge of the mirror. A few small noises started behind them and a bubble of adrenaline burst in Emily's chest. When the little girl came fully into view in the mirror, Emily gasped sharply, bringing a hand up to silence it a moment too late.

The sudden sound and movement seemed to startle the girl, but she didn't disappear. She wore a white dress that was ripped and tattered like she'd been caught in a bramble patch. The hem and her feet were both muddy. She looked cold.

After a moment of eye contact in the mirror, the girl seemed to sense that she wasn't in any danger and turned her attention to the unicorn. Her eyes widened when she spotted the toy and her mouth fell open a little.

The tiny hairs on the back of Emily's neck prickled and an icy chill hit her skin as a tiny hand reached across the table to grab the toy. Out of her peripheral vision, she saw John shiver and knew he felt the same thing.

The girl studied the unicorn for a few seconds, a glow that seemed to come from within her glinting off the sparkles in the unicorn's white plastic hide. Seeming to decide on something, she then hugged the unicorn tightly to her chest and smiled widely.

A wave of happiness washed over Emily and she couldn't discern whether it was her own happiness at having made the little girl happy or whether it was something the spirit was emanating. She couldn't help the smile that blossomed.

Somewhere in her room, she had a photograph taken on Christmas about ten years ago that was almost identical to the image in the mirror. Her father had given her a stuffed horse that year and she hadn't wanted to unwrap any other presents because she was too busy hugging it. Her father always said that she'd smiled 'to the moon and back' that day.

Suddenly there were tears in her eyes as she realized how her own child would've looked very much the same as this girl with her dark hair and porcelain skin. She felt a little burst of affection inside her chest and had to remind herself that this girl was not human.

She caught John's expression in the mirror as he tried to signal her to get on with it without scaring the girl, either out of impatience or because he was was freaked out that they'd actually conjured a spirit. She thought she saw an uneasiness in his eyes and wondered if he could feel the same giddy affection for the girl that she did.

She felt a little on the spot as she tried to think of a question for the girl. "How...how old are you?" she blurted, feeling a little stupid because she knew the girl's age based on the legend behind the ritual.

The girl scrunched up her nose and Emily wondered whether she had forgotten in the centuries that had passed since her death. "Seven and a half," the spirit answered. She had a squeaky little girl voice that somehow seemed to fill the room and at the same time was spoken just for her to hear.

"What's your favourite colour?" Emily asked, feeling a surge of confidence at the little girl's smile.

"Pink!" she exclaimed confidently. She ran a hand over the unicorn's pink mane. Emily briefly wished she'd thought to braid the mane so that it wouldn't get tangled the way all her toy horses' manes had.

"I like pink too. What's your favourite animal?"

"I had a pet canary," she said thoughtfully, like it was hard to remember. "He sang pretty songs, but then he flew away. I miss him..."

Suddenly worried that if the spirit got sad she might throw a tantrum, Emily rushed in with another question so she wouldn't dwell. "What kind of toys do you like best?"

"Those dolls with the pretty dresses."

"Barbies?" Emily asked. The girl nodded.

"Do you like talking to people like us?"

The girl grinned and nodded with the kind of enthusiasm that only a child could have. She seemed so excited to have someone listen to her. The happy glow washed over Emily again.

She was running out of ideas of things to ask, but didn't want to let her go just yet. "Umm...where do you live?"

The girl pointed to the mirror and shrugged a little. Emily could see John's eyes go wide and he started to get antsy and squirm. She was suddenly worried that he'd say or do something to upset the spirit and the thought was terrifying.

"We have to go now," she whispered sadly. A little pout formed across the girl's lips and Emily's heart twinged. "Goodbye, Charlotte," she and John both said. With a disappointed expression, the girl waved goodbye and walked into the corner of the mirror, the sound of tiny footsteps fading away slowly after.

"Did...did that really just happen?" John stammered, twisting around in his chair as soon as Charlotte was gone.

"The unicorn is gone," Emily pointed out, already missing the feeling she got when the little girl smiled, already wondering how soon she could speak to her again.


	4. Chapter 4

After things had gone completely pear-shaped in whatever realm she'd reached via the elevator, Emily had every intention of quitting while she was ahead.

But then something even less probable than making contact with the spirit world happened...people at school started noticing her, talking to her. People she would've bet her trust fund didn't even know her name were inviting her to sit with them at lunch and waving to her in the hallways between classes.

After nearly a year and a half of being invisible to people her own age, suddenly being acknowledged was almost more disconcerting than angry ghosts. Nearly overnight, she'd been catapulted into instant celebrity.

It was nearly a week before she found out that John had been telling people about their visit with Charlotte. Emily didn't want to talk about Charlotte – something about that encounter seemed so personal, so private, and she didn't want to let other people inside the memory.

The call she'd made with the shoebox telephone was also something she couldn't share, but for very different reasons.

Instead, she told them about the Other Side. About the girl she'd met on the fifth floor, about the distant glowing red cross that had held her spellbound, about the blood-curdling fear upon reaching the lobby only to be met with the realization that she hadn't escaped afterall.

It was clear that not everyone she talked to believed her – several of them clearly only listened because they thought she was completely off her rocker. But most of them seemed to think her some kind of real-life horror movie badass and they hung on her every word.

And she lavished in their attention and admiration, feeling social acceptance for quite possibly the first time since preschool.

The biggest surprise came in the form of an invitation to JJ's annual cliche teenage rager. Emily didn't get invited to parties. It was one of the unwritten rules of high school. Emily was weird. Emily was a loner. Emily didn't fit in, the way local birds didn't fit in at the zoo.

She definitely didn't get invited to JJ's parties. JJ was petite and blonde and adorable. She was captain of the JV soccer team in the spring and head cheerleader in the fall, meaning she was one of the guys _and_ one of the girls. She had it all...at least, in Emily's eyes.

Emily didn't even care that she'd only been invited as some kind of sideshow. She was invited and that was all that mattered.

Most of the student body had heard her elevator story by now, so she was making sure she had new material for the party.

Someone on a message board had suggested a way to summon a cab that would take her to the Other Side. It was more complicated and possibly more dangerous than getting there via an elevator, but the payoff, at least in terms of storytelling value, was much higher.

She'd had to wait until her mother got called away to a last-minute conference in Paris before attempting the ritual. Her mother had an annoying habit of becoming interested in what she was doing at the least opportune moments and she didn't want to risk her mother waking up in the middle of the night to find her missing.

She'd had to make a special trip to some new-age store to find sage to burn to cleanse the house before she could summon the cab. The visit to the store was kind of unsettling; the moment she'd walked in, the woman behind the counter stopped talking, like she'd completely forgotten every word in the English language. The entire time she shopped, Emily felt the woman's eyes on her back with an unnerving intensity. And when she turned to leave after paying for the sage smudge stick, the woman had wrapped her fingers around Emily's wrist way too tightly and whispered with urgency, “You need to seek help before it's too late. You're in grave danger.” Emily made a mental note to never set foot in that store again.

She burned the sage in every room of the house, which took quite some time, and once done, she scattered the ashes on the front steps.

When it was nearly completely dark outside, she sat herself in front of the old corded phone that her mother constantly complained about, but had somehow been permanently attached to the wall and continued to resist all attempts to remove it.

She counted to thirteen as instructed, then dialled the eight digit number. The phone wasn't plugged into anything – to her knowledge, they didn't even _have_ a land-line anymore – so she was fairly sure she wasn't going to accidentally end up contacting a laundromat or some other random place.

Tying the black cord around the handset took some awkward maneuverings to get it tight enough to lift the receiver without coming loose. When it finally withstood the tugging, she lifted it out of the cradle by touching only the cord and dialled the second eight digit number.

After counting to thirteen a second time, she whispered into the receiver, “Hello? I need a cab,” then hung up.

She was a little surprised that she wasn't nervous as she removed the first cord and replaced it with an identical one.

A glance out the window showed nothing different about the evening and no cab parked outside, so she pulled a cigarette and her beat up lighter out of her pocket. She felt the smooth surface of the black tourmaline stone she'd taken to carrying everywhere with her and remembered that she wasn't allowed any protection objects on this journey, so she dropped it beside the phone with the first cord she had to burn when she returned.

She stepped outside to smoke so the smell wouldn't get trapped inside the house for her mother to detect. That's when she spotted the black cab. She was entirely sure it hadn't been sitting there sixty seconds ago, but there it was, seeming as solid and real as any cab she'd ever seen in her life, if not a little more imposing. Oddly enough, all the houses on the block were now dark and decidedly less welcoming than they'd seemed earlier.

Pocketing the unlit cigarette, she crossed the street to examine the cab. It was empty, no passenger or driver. Other than that, it seemed normal enough, if a little tidier than most cabs she'd ridden in before. The back door was open, so she got in and lay down, as per the instructions.

She wasn't sure she'd be able to fall asleep and suddenly wished she'd had time for the cigarette, as that always calmed her down.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up, sprawled awkwardly across the backseat. She had no memory of falling asleep, of dreaming at all, she didn't even remember what had prompted her to wake. She took a few moments to check that she was still alone, that she didn't feel like she was being watched, that the street was empty before she was satisfied that it was safe to continue.

The odd orangish glow of the sky reflected off the face of her watch, reminding her to check the time. The rules had specified 3:30 and though her watch said 3:34, she decided there wasn't any urgent need to end the ritual, given that it had likely taken her a few minutes before she thought about the watch.

Feeling satisfied with how things were going, she rolled over to face the backs of the seats and returned to sleep easily.

When she woke up the second time – sitting up with her neck at a painful angle, head resting against the glass, even though she'd fallen asleep lying down – it was clear she wasn't in her world. It didn't look like the realm the elevator had taken her to either. There were fields and nothing else; they were growing something a sickly looking grey color, but other than that, they seemed normal enough.

She turned her attention instead to the being driving the cab. It had a vaguely humanoid shape, though she couldn't be entirely sure because of the heavy black hooded cloak that hid him from her view. The only part of him she could see well was his hands; neither aged nor smooth and young, neither bony nor fleshy, the only remarkable thing about that was that they seemed quite tan.

Outside the window, she spotted movement out of the corner of her eye. A distant marching army was moving across the grey fields. They didn't seem to have a destination in mind, they were just marching, almost parade like. They all carried long poles leaning against their shoulders and there seemed to be something atop them, but she couldn't quite make out what it was.

The complete silence was broken by the sound of distant wailing quickly approaching and her attention was broken away from the oddly hypnotic marching. A sea of bodies had surrounded the cab and they threw their bodies up against the body of the vehicle, clawing at the windows as if trying to get it. They were screeching and wailing, sounds of agonizing pain. Some of them seemed to be pulling out their own hair.

The cab suddenly pulled to a stop and for the first time that night, Emily felt true fear. The instructions had warned that no one had ever survived to report what happened if they stayed in the cab long enough for it to reach it's final destination, but it was assumed that they were either killed or went completely insane.

The sea of bodies around them parted as if on command and then the door opened... She hadn't planned on this happening. A man (God, she hoped it was human) with too-long limbs wearing a too-dark suit climbed in next to her and the cab started moving again.

She stared directly forward and tried hard not to move a muscle. The rules said that if you looked directly at anything that got into the cab with you, it would kill you. The thing, whatever it was, seemed to have no such compunctions. It was looking directly at her and she found herself oddly compelled to turn and look at it, but she fought the urge with everything in her.

From the periphery, she could see the most unsettling smile spread across the man's face. It was too wide and showed too many teeth and was too fake to be anything _normal_.

Ice spread through her veins.

She turned to look out the window to try and take her mind off the thing. The marching army was much closer now and she was able to get a closer look at what was on the ends of their poles. What she had assumed to be banners of some kind were actually human heads. Their mouths were moving, but she couldn't hear what they were saying. Emily realized with alarm that none of the army had faces.

With a churning stomach, she leaned forward to whisper in the driver's ear, “I have reached my final destination.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, I hadn't intended on including the whole team in this fic, but they wanted to be here, apparently. They probably won't be anything other than people on the periphery, she's not really friends with them at this point. Keep in mind, that this is Emily's story, so if things are said that don't seem in-character for any member of the team, it's because of Emily's jaded teenage POV and not mischaracterization.

“And then what happened?” Derek asked, leaning forwards in his seat in eagerness.

Emily shrugged. “And then I just woke up. I was on the floor of my living room and I had a killer headache. It was like a really fucked up dream.”

“That's it?” JJ sounded kind of disappointed.

“I thought it was better to end the ritual before the guy in the cab with me got a chance to stab me to death,” Emily deadpanned.

“Enough talk,” Penelope said, clapping her hands together, “When do we get to play one of these games?”

“I wouldn't really call them games,” Emily pointed out, the realization of why she'd really been invited washing over her.

“'Game' would imply that you can win,” Spencer pointed out, “I think that by playing them you can only ever lose...”

“There's a pretty low-risk ritual I used to play as a kid when we lived in the Ukraine,” Emily offered when everyone continued to look at her expectantly. “It's a Russian game to summon a gnome.”

“Come on, ghost girl,” Derek said, punching her lightly on the arm, “Let's get some demons or some shit up in here.”

“I don't know,” she mumbled, “These games all involve risk, you could be inviting things into your life, and if you don't know the consequences...” Either no one was listening to her or they simply didn't care, so she sighed wearily and resigned herself to being their freak show. “Fine. Someone find a red hardcover book.”

Once everyone was situated in a circle, the room completely dark aside from the flickering red candles, Emily started the game. The book would be used as a conduit for a spirit to tell them the future. It couldn't lie, but it could be intentionally vague and leave out important details. And just because the game seemed non-threatening didn't mean it couldn't harm them if they weren't careful.

The book JJ had found was an old anthology of Grimm's tales, bound in red leather, words embossed across the front and back covers. She had to wonder if JJ had intentionally chosen such a dark book; she could only imagine the kind of fun the spirits were about to have messing with their minds.

She placed her palm on the cover and shut her eyes. With a deep inhale, she asked, “Red Book, can I enter your game?” _“'Cannot I, too, order the sun and moon to rise?'”_ She had a feeling that was a no.

She passed the book to Derek who sat on her right. “Red Book, can I enter your game?” he asked. _“'Behave well, Hans.'”_ “What the hell does that mean?” he laughed.

“That's a yes,” Emily informed him, “And a reminder to be careful.”

The book next went to JJ. _“The peasant did everything that he had been told not to do,”_ the book responded to her request to enter. Emily silently thought the book was scolding the other girl for not having listened to her warning.

_“'Nay,' said the bird.”_

_“'Turn back, turn back, young maiden dear.'”_

_“'Go at once!'”_

The book made several rounds before anyone else was allowed to enter the game. Spencer was the next one admitted, when the book answered, _“'I may let the worthy old woman in.'”_ Everyone laughed.

Everyone seemed too nervous to start asking real questions, so Emily took it upon herself to ask, “Red Book, are there any ghosts in the house?” _“'Listen very early some morning if anything is moving in the room.'”_ She could practically see several people in the circle suddenly start to take the game much more seriously.

“Red Book, will I get a football scholarship?” Derek asked to book next. _“'Just as the King commands.'”_ Taking that to mean yes, he proceeded to high five everyone within arm's reach.

“Red Book, will I marry Will?” JJ asked. She was seated in her boyfriend's lap and at the mention of his name, he kissed the back of her neck, making her giggle. _“Thereupon the marriage was solemnized, and they lived happily until their death.”_

Emily had to admit she was surprised at the benevolent mood the spirits seemed to be in that night. When she used to play the game with her nanny's son during the short time she'd lived in the States while her father was stationed in Langley, no matter what book they used, it inevitably gave creepy answers.

“Red Book, will I be safe tonight?” she asked on her next turn. _“'Your life is forfeited.'”_ You could almost feel the chill creep across the circle as she read the answer aloud.

Penelope snatched the book from her hands and asked the same question, “Red Book, will Emily be safe tonight?” _“'There's blood within the shoe.”_ “This is getting creepy,” she declared.

“Red Book, what will happen when Emily leaves tonight?” Derek asked. He was one of the few remaining ones who seemed to think this was funny. _“'If the devil comes home and finds you, it will cost you your life.'”_

“I think we should quit playing now,” Spencer said, his voice cracking.

“We can't end the game until everyone's gotten permission to leave,” Emily warned, passing him the book.

“Red Book, can I leave your game?” he asked, trying not to let it show that his hands were shaking. _“'I have no objection, but be quick and get me something to eat.'”_

That was clearly a yes, but no one seemed eager to take the book next for fear that they might be what the spirit wanted to eat. Emily sighed and took the book, asking for permission to exit the game. _“'No, no, I cannot bear it.'”_

JJ took the book next. _“'We will think about that.'”_

Will unravelled his arms from around her and took the book. “Red Book, can I leave your game?” _“'Well, it is all right.”_

When it was Derek's turn to ask permission, the book told him, _“'Most certainly not! Most certainly not!'”_ The book that had been so reluctant to let them in now seemed to be having a great deal of fun and wasn't about to let them end the game so easily.

When she flipped through the book to a random page, Penelope sliced her finger on one of the pages. The line she pointed to informed her, _“'Not for money or land,' answered she, 'but for flesh and blood.'”_ Since she'd cut herself on the page, they figured that was the payment the book demanded.

_“'What will you give me,' said the manikin, 'if I do it for you?'”_

_“'If you will pay for them.'”_

_“'Shall I kill it?'”_

The book seemed to be demanding payment in exchange for freedom and Emily could see people getting nervous. Derek slipped a ten dollar bill between the pages, then asked again if he could leave the game. _“'No, something that is living is dearer to me than all the treasures in the world,'”_ the book answered, before spitting the bill out from amongst its pages.

“Keep me and let the others go,” Emily whispered so only the book could hear her on her next turn. She knew that the spirits wanted her anyway. “Red Book, can I leave your game?” _“'Neither now, nor ever.'”_

Her bargain seemed to pacify the book, though, for everyone else was allowed to leave shortly afterwards.


	6. Chapter 6

It was close to two AM when Derek drove her home from JJ's house. She didn't have her license yet and even if she did, she was pretty buzzed from doing Jager bombs (Penelope's suggestion...she'd challenged Emily to go drink for drink, apparently having missed the fact that Emily had spent her formative years in France and Italy). Penelope was staying the night with JJ and though they'd extended the offer to Emily as well, she didn't really feel like they wanted her there.

She had been planning on just cabbing it home, but the one thing she'd learned from an evening spent with Derek Morgan was that he took being a gentleman very seriously, so she'd accepted his offer of a ride.

He spent half the drive trying to convince her to join him in his very off-key singing along with what he insisted was his sister's Beyonce CD and the other half telling terrible jokes. (Was that flirting? She thought maybe he was flirting...but she had also thought the engine was too loud and tried using the volume on the stereo to turn it down.) She spent the drive trying not to throw up all over his car.

They were driving down the deserted stretch of road that lead to the gated community on the edge of town where she lived when Emily suddenly screamed and grabbed the steering wheel, jerking the car sharply into the opposite lane.

With a strangled cry of alarm, Derek elbowed her away and righted the car. He pulled over to the side of the road and put the car in park before he turned to her and shouted, "What the fuck, Emily!? Are you trying to get us killed!?"

She wasn't looking at him, though. She had twisted around in her seat, peering intently out the rear windshield. "Didn't you see him!?"

"See who?" he asked irritatedly. "It's two AM, no one's out here but us."

"No, he was there!" she argued, "He was just standing in the middle of the road...waiting for me." Her eyes were huge and her face was chalky white.

"What are you talking about?" He sounded more worried now than angry.

"He's following me..." Her voice was just a whisper now.

Frustrated, he grabbed her shoulders and turned her to face him. "Emily, _who_ is following you?"

"The man from the cab." Her eyes jumped around as if she were afraid he might materialize in the backseat at any moment if she weren't vigilant. "I recognized the smile..."

"Emily," he said slowly, "Did you take something?"

She pushed him away. "I'm not imagining things!" she shouted. She fumbled with her seatbelt for a moment, then clumsily exited the car and wandered out into the middle of the street. "Where are you?" she demanded, head whipping around. "Show yourself, fucker!"

"Emily, you're going to get hit by a car!" Derek grabbed her by the elbow and tugged her out of the road.

She wrenched her arm out of his grip. "You don't believe me," she accused. "But he's out here, just waiting for me to let my guard down..." Her voice was getting louder and more hysterical. "Well, that's not gonna happen! You hear me, asshole? That's not going to happen!"

Worried that someone was going to call the cops on them, Derek picked her up and slung her over his shoulder, unceremoniously stuffing her into the backseat before she could protest.

As he pulled away from the curb, she glanced out the back window and she locked eyes with a familiar grinning face and that's when she lost the battle with her nausea, all over the backseat.

......

The next morning, Emily woke up a little hungover and a lot mortified.

She wrote a quick text to Derek to apologize and promised to pay to have his car cleaned, not sure she'd ever be able to show her face around him again.

She had almost been about to write the whole embarrassing incident off as a drunken hallucination when she'd heard a noise outside and seen the grinning man standing across the street staring up at her. It was becoming abundantly clear that she had a big problem on her hands.

In an immediate fit of panic, she went around the house and salted every door and window, even the ones that didn't open on the second floor. She didn't even care that her mother would be pissed about the mess when she got home. Just to be sure, she also scattered rice all over the entryway floor – her grandfather told her that if you scattered grains, spirits and fae beings would feel compelled to count every last one and when they couldn't keep track, they'd get annoyed and leave.

After a lot of research, she found a ritual that seemed to promise to banish or at least weaken any malevolent beings following her.

It took quite a bit of preparation to find all the objects she'd need and she was really hoping her mother wouldn't come home early because she had no idea how she'd explain any of this. At 5:15 PM exactly, with a sheet of printed instructions in her hand, she stood at the bottom of the staircase and declared to the house at large, "It is from here whenceforth I shall commence."

"Here is the air that mortal breathes." She set a small fan on the first step.

"Here is the water that mortal drinks." She set a glass of water on the second step.

"Here is the earth on which mortal stands." She set a dish of dirt on the third step.

"Here is the fire that burns mortal's hands." She set a candle and a book of matches on the fourth step.

"Here is the time that has come to pass." She set the earliest available picture of her house on the fifth step.

"Here is the present and the die are cast." She set a current picture of her house on the sixth step and beside it rolled a pair of dice."

"Here comes the future, the time ticks by now." She set a clock on the seventh step.

"Here is the offering for Devil's mouth." She set a piece of cheese on the eighth step.

"Here is my image, in God's likeness I trust." She set a compact mirror on the ninth step.

"Here is mortality, ashes and dust." She set a dish of fireplace ash and dust bunnies fished from under her bed on the tenth step.

"Here is a life I present unto thee." She set a jar containing a live ladybug on the eleventh step.

"And here is the essence extracted from me." She set a clipping of her fingernails on the twelfth step.

"No further than here." She drew a line of salt across the edge of the landing.

Now, all she had to do was wait until morning and hope that her stalking spectre wasn't strong enough to get through twelve different curses and her salt barriers and rice counting task. If it was, it was going to be really pissed once it had reached her and she wouldn't stand a chance against it.

She'd forgotten to eat before she started and she didn't want to weaken the curses by going up and down the stairs, so she decided not to bother with dinner. Her jangling nerves were kind of killing her appetite anyway.

......

She'd set her alarm to go off at 5:10 the next afternoon so she'd be ready to start completing the ritual five minutes later. She had spent the day chugging coffee so she would be able to stay awake all night, thirteen uninterrupted hours.

Completing the ritual required a weapon, preferably of silver. She had an antique pocket knife that her grandfather had left her in his will with a silver handle and she hoped that would be enough because that was the closest she could get.

At 5:15, her watch beeped and she planted her feet at the bottom step, ready to stand completely still for an hour.

At 6:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and turned on the fan so that it blew across the step. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 7:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and chugged the glass of water. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 8:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and dumped the dirt onto the riser so that she could stand in it. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 9:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and lit the candle, holding it in front of herself to guard it from the draft. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 10:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and used the candle to burn the old picture into ash. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 11:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and tore small rips into the current picture nine times, as indicated by the dice. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 12:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and turned the clock ahead nine hours, as indicated by the dice. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 1:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and ate the cheese, even though it had been sitting overnight and was hardened and warm; she acted as though it was delicious. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 2:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and looked into the mirror, taking care to not let it reflect anything that might be behind her. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 3:15, her watch beeped again. She smashed the mirror onto the riser, breaking it. She moved to the next step and picked a scab off her leg where she'd cut herself shaving so that she could drop some blood in the dish of ashes and dust. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 4:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and opened the jar, dumping the ladybug into her hand, then squished it. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 5:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and with a grimace, swallowed the fingernail whole. She stood completely still for the next hour. She reminded herself not to look behind her.

At 6:15, her watch beeped again. She moved to the next step and fished the pocket knife out of her jeans. With a shuddering breath, she whipped around, not knowing what to expect.

Only, there was nothing. Just a feeling of foolishness, one foot falling asleep, a small stomach ache, and blood drying on her shin.

When her mother got home, she yelled at her because there was rice all over the floor.


	7. Chapter 7

Emily laid low for several days after completing the banishment ritual, waiting to see if the strange things happening around her died down.

In that time, she paid to have Derek's car cleaned and gave him tickets to a football game in apology for having to corral her drunken ass and clean her vomit. She didn't accept any of the invitations to upcoming parties.

When nothing unexplainable happened and there were no more sightings of inhuman grinning monsters, she felt fairly certain she was in the clear and decided to continue down the rabbit hole of paranormal games. If asked, she couldn't have clearly articulated why she was doing it...all she knew was that she felt powerful, felt in control when she faced the darkness.

She had to dig fairly deeply into the internet archives to find something that seemed fairly low-risk with a spectacular payoff. Very few rituals had any sort of reward for successful completion – some offered a wish granted, but Emily wasn't sure anything she wanted could be granted, even by the kind of forces she was playing with. This ritual, however, came with a very big reward (a reward with strings attached, but a reward nonetheless).

It took a full two weeks of sleuthing before she found the store that would sell her what she needed to complete the ritual. The internet wasn't very helpful, only offering vague guesses and rumors as to the location and no one she talked to seemed to have any clue what she was talking about. It was only by chance one day that she overheard a conversation between her mother and some political friend of hers describing the building as an eyesore.

The store was only open between nine at night and six in the morning, so visiting it required sneaking out of the house after her mother was asleep. Emily was well-versed in that particular area.

She had a cab waiting for her as she shimmied down the garden trellis and he gave her a doubtful look as she was clearly a minor sneaking out. Emily rolled her eyes and suddenly missed Rome where no one gave a shit about what teenagers were doing. She offered the driver a twenty and one of the Cuban cigars she'd pilfered from her father before he left and the driver nodded once and asked where she was headed.

He seemed skeptical when she told him the address, telling her that there was nothing out there, but she just leaned back in the seat and waited and eventually he started driving. She pretended she couldn't understand the things he was saying about her under his breath in Russian.

It was 11:30 when the cab pulled up outside the pitch black building standing lone sentinel on the outskirts of the city and there was an ominous stillness in the air. The cabbie seemed surprised to see the building there and more than a little uneasy. She had to practically beg him to wait for her to run in and he eventually agreed when she told him to keep the meter running and offered another twenty.

The door to the shop was a deep red with a shining golden eye painted on it. When she pushed it open, a heavy cloud of incense washed over her.

She was the only customer in the store, which she supposed wasn't entirely surprising considering the late hour and the difficulty finding the store in the first place. She rang the bell on the counter and the largest, most intimidating man she'd ever seen in her life emerged from the back room. He had to be nearly seven feet tall and his face was so dark and flawless he looked as if he'd been carved out of obsidian.

It took her a few moments to find her voice again as he towered over her like a mountain. She slapped a five dollar bill on the counter and in her most commanding voice, asked for the three types of incense in the instructions. She hoped he understood what she was saying because she was pretty sure she'd completely butchered the pronunciation.

The man went into the back room without a word and returned with the incense she'd asked for. He snatched the money off the counter and asked if she needed anything else. His voice was dark and smooth like obsidian also.

Emily nodded her head, put another five dollars on the counter, and asked for a box to go with her incense. The box he brought back was very nice, nearly two feet long with designs carved into the dark wood and holes cut into the top. But the hinge worked fine, so she exchanged the bill on the counter for a ten and asked for a different box.

The next one he brought out had a broken hinge. She thanked him and left immediately. The cab driver looked at her like she'd lost her mind and a small amount of awed respect when she got back in the car.

......

Emily went to the small garden shed on the edge of the property to complete the next step. It was the only place that she felt reasonably sure her mother wouldn't smell the incense burning. It's where she went to smoke sometimes because her mother never went out there and even if she did, she'd probably assume it was the gardeners who smoked.

She chose one stick of the least unpleasant scent and burned it. It took longer than she'd expected. She texted Matthew to see if he was still awake; she hadn't spoken to him in a few days and wanted to check that he hadn't overdosed in an alley somewhere.

When the incense burned itself out, she felt along the edge of the box for the secret compartment and pulled out the packet hidden inside.

She gagged when she lit the incense stick that was inside the secret foil package. It had a cloyingly thick scent of rotting meat and it hit the back of her throat forcefully enough to have her swallowing down bile. She closed her eyes and ground down on her back teeth, trying to breathe as little as possible.

When the scent started to fade away, she opened her eyes and found herself in the backroom of the little incense shop. She looked up from her position cross-legged on the floor and stared into the eyes of the massive shopkeep. He held both hands out to her, a book in one, a small glass vial in the other.

She reached out to grasp the book. It felt too heavy in her hands. The leather binding was cracked so badly, edges of it were digging into her palms.

She closed her eyes again and let out a deep breath, counting to ten slowly in her mind. She knew she'd returned home when the faint smell of rotting meat hit her nostrils again. She couldn't wait to see if the book was truly what had been promised, so she opened to door to the shed and inhaled a few lungfuls of fresh air before opening the book to a random page.

As she read the page, deep understanding filled her in a way she couldn't explain. She didn't know how she knew it was telling the truth, she just _knew_.

All the secrets in the universe were contained in the book. But she'd never be able to tell a soul.

Those were the rules.


	8. Chapter 8

Derek caught up with Emily one day in the parking lot as she waited to be picked up after school. “Hey, so I wanted to thank you for the tickets to the game. I haven't been to a game since...since my dad died. I took my mama, I think she had fun. You didn't have to do that.” He rambled a little, hands jammed down into his pockets awkwardly, not at all the self-assured, almost cocky, Derek Morgan she'd come to expect.

“Umm...you're welcome,” she stammered a little. She wasn't sure how to carry on a normal conversation with him anymore. The book she'd been given upon completing the incense ritual had revealed to her a big secret he was hiding and she couldn't meet his eyes without thinking about it. She'd been avoiding him because of it (and some residual embarrassment over her drunken behaviour).

“Anyway, thanks. And I hope you haven't been avoiding the parties because of what happened... It's been forgotten.” He grinned his thousand watt smile, making her blush a little.

She shook her head. “My mom has been kinda pissed at me because she's still finding rice in the hallway carpet...” He raised a brow curiously, so she added, “Long story. She thinks I had too much freedom in Italy, so now she's in lock-down mode half the time.”

He nodded, but in a way that said _'I have no fucking clue what you're talking about'_. “Well, if your mom lets up, let me know. My mother has been insisting I invite you over for dinner, she wants to thank you for the tickets.”

“Oh, um, okay,” she mumbled. “I'll text you?”

He grinned again and punched her lightly in the shoulder. “I promise not to tell her all your spooky stories, ghost girl.” He winked and jogged away, waving.

......

It was official. She was developing a crush on Derek Morgan.

She had a bad habit of getting crushes on boys who showed her even the slightest bit of kindness, especially if said boy was even a little bit popular. It didn't help that Derek was the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen in her life (including all the boys she'd met in Italy and France).

The last time she'd had a crush on a boy, it ended in literally the worst way possible and at that time, she'd vowed she would never so much has hold hands with a boy for at least a decade. So, she was more than a little dismayed at recent events...

She wanted to be friends with him...but _just friends_. He wasn't in a good place to have a relationship and she'd probably just make his life worse, the way she ruined everyone else's when she got too close.

She felt the situation called for the use of one of the wish-granting rituals she'd discovered. If she did it correctly, she could wish for her crush to go away. The idea felt creepy and somehow wrong, but she was desperate.

This particular ritual was so simple that she barely gave it any thought. She was more worried about having to break the mirror if something went wrong, than she was about something actually going wrong.

At midnight, she locked herself in the darkened bathroom and lit a candle in front of the mirror. She took a moment to stare at her reflection in the wobbly light, watching her face distort back and forth, barely recognizing the person in the mirror.

She picked up the tube of lipstick when she started to feel like her reflection was watching _her_. The darkness liked to play tricks on her.

She wrote _'Lady Spades'_ on the glass in large swoops using her brightest red lipstick. It had been her favourite until it had gone through the wash (the maid had never quite forgiven her for that) and she hadn't been able to find one quite the same color since.

She produced the Queen of Spades card from her pocket and turned it to face the mirror. A few months ago, she would've been a nervous wreck about doing this, it probably would've taken her hours to clear her mind. As it was, she had no trouble. She didn't have anything to lose that she particularly cared about.

She closed her eyes and spoke the words, “Lady Spades, appear,” repeating until she'd said it seven times. Then, she waited.

It took a few minutes, but when she heard it, the sound was clear and unmistakable. A woman's laughter echoing far away and then close to her ear. It wasn't a particularly frightening kind of laughter like the kind she'd heard while attempting the shoebox telephone, but it was unsettling, a little maniacal even.

Emily opened her eyes and came face-to-face with Lady Spades. She was staring into the deepest, darkest black eyes she'd ever seen. They weren't the inhumanly black eyes you saw in the movies where there was no iris, no whites – they just seemed like an impossibly dark brown. She was dressed all in black and Emily almost laughed as they were wearing nearly identical outfits.

The woman was smiling. Not a creepy smile like the one she still saw occasionally in her nightmares where she was back in the cab. It was a beautiful smile, endearing almost. Her face was what was truly unsettling. It was horribly disfigured and scarred. Emily had been taught how to school her features and smile diplomatically in uncomfortable situations and she focused on that, afraid of offending the woman.

The woman said nothing and made no movements. The candle flickered, but didn't go out. Emily took a breath and focused on the wording she'd mentally rehearsed. She wasn't sure how important it was to be unambiguous in this situation, but she figured it was best to be as clear as possible and not leave any room for her to play tricks by granting the wish too literally.

“I wish to have all my romantic feelings towards Derek Morgan gone.”

Silence followed. Emily kept her eyes locked on the woman's as if her very life depended on it. This was the last hurdle and if she could keep eye contact, the ritual would be successful. It didn't hurt that she often got into staring matches with her mother in a subtle challenge to her authority.

Her eyes were starting to burn and she was on the verge of having to blink when Lady Spades smiled and whispered, “Yes.”

Emily breathed a sigh of relief and blinked a few times to soothe her eyes.

“Lady Spades, disappear,” she commanded, then smeared the lipstick on the mirror with her palm until the words were indecipherable smudges and the only face in the mirror was her own.

It was early morning, but she was unable to fall asleep just then. She was suddenly struck with the worry about what would happen if Derek actually _was_ flirting with her because he genuinely liked her. What if he asked her out, but she had no feelings for him because she'd asked some ghost to make her feelings disappear?

She climbed up on the roof with a notebook, the thought refusing to leave her mind now that it was there. She'd write him a letter, explaining what she'd done and why. Her terrible history with boys, what had happened to Matthew, about Baby...she'd explain it all. She'd tell him that she knew his secret and how she'd just make things worse. She'd tell him that maybe if they'd met years from now, maybe things could've been different.

Of course, she had no intention of ever giving him the letter. That would mean exposing her secrets to him and opening herself to his judgement, seeing all the kindness vanish from his eyes to be replaced with disdain.


	9. Chapter 9

Emily was starting to become old news around school.

Her stories weren't as impressive as they used to be. She hadn't done anything particularly risky since the cab ride and people were either starting to think she was making things up or they weren't impressed unless her life was actually in danger.

Emily wasn't proud of it, but she craved social acceptance like a drug. People looking at her like some kind of spectacle was as close to being popular as she'd ever gotten...

She was willing to take stupid risks and face angry spirits if it would buy her a few more days of infamy.

Those were the thoughts running through her head as the car headed towards the cemetery. Derek had agreed to drive her since she didn't have her license yet and for whatever reason he liked her and wanted a first-hand view of her in action. And she'd promised to give him whatever money she made that night. His mother was working that night, so she wouldn't notice him missing. Her mother would notice if she went looking, but she didn't particularly care.

“Do you really need _ten_ pounds of salt?” Derek asked with a quirked brow as he helped her lug the bag across the cemetery. “This thing's almost as heavy as you are,” he teased.

Emily rolled her eyes. “I have to make sure I have enough to give the same amount to everyone that asks or bad shit happens,” she explained as if it were obvious.

“Right, of course,” he scoffed, lightly hip-checking her, making her stumble. “And _why_ exactly do they need salt? Ghost food taste bland or something?”

“The same reason people need salt when the paranormal is involved. They use it to fend off evil spirits.” Emily set a blanket on the ground underneath a lone tree, a few minutes shy of midnight.

“What if evil spirits want to buy salt? That's discrimination against the morally misaligned,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face.

She stared at him, unamused as he smirked at her with his smartass grin. “Would you get out of here before you piss off something 'morally misaligned' and get both of us killed?”

“You owe me breakfast after this is over,” Derek told her, tossing her his sweater. “I'll be asleep in the car, so wake me up when you close shop. And try not to die.”

“Thank for the vote of confidence,” she deadpanned. She wrapped herself up in his sweater and pulled the hood up so far it hung over her eyes.

She leaned back against the tree trunk and cocooned herself in a blanket. She kind of wished he would've stayed with her to keep her company since she had nothing else to do for the next seven hours, but she was pretty sure he was just a little bit afraid, not that he'd ever admit it.

She waited with her head down, eyes trained firmly on the ground in front of her. She didn't feel foolish, only bored; she'd done enough of these rituals to know someone would show up sooner or later.

She saw no movement for the first hour and a half and she was nearly falling asleep in her nest of blankets when the first hand cast itself into her line of vision, startling her awake.

It didn't appear to be rotting, the way you might expect. It was bony and shrivelled, but otherwise more or less looked to be a regular human hand. It held steady as it waited for her to fumble with the measuring cup with hands numb from the cold.

Eventually she regained control of her fingers and managed to pour the salt into the waiting hand, albeit somewhat clumsily, seeing as she had to keep her eyes cast downwards the entire time. Hopefully the spirit wouldn't be angry about the grains spilling over the sides of its palm.

The hand disappeared from her line of sight and she held out her own hand, awaiting payment. After a moment or two, she felt the smooth edges of something pressing into her palm and, in her calmest voice, thanked the spirit for the payment.

When she examined the object close to her face in the darkness, it appeared to be an old metal button caked with dirt. She stuffed it into her pocket, waiting for morning when it would turn into something useable.

It wasn't long before the next hand presented itself, numerous others following after, salt clearly in high demand. She was actually getting kind of bored with the whole thing.

Then the wailing started. Wailing wasn't really an accurate word for it, but she didn't have any other word to describe it. It was unlike any other sound she'd ever heard. It pulsed against the inside of her skull, making her head ache.

They started and stopped randomly like whatever was making them was breathing. It sounded like whatever was making the noise was standing over her, a dark looming presence, just waiting for her to look up at it. She pressed her hands tightly against her ears to try and block it out.

She couldn't leave until the sun rose now that she'd started, but she was starting to wonder if the consequences wouldn't be better than being driven insane by the shrieking sound currently rending her sanity apart.

When the sun started peeking over the edge of the horizon, she gathered her stuff awkwardly in her arms, unwilling to hang around even a second longer. She kept her eyes to the ground, resulting in a lot of stumbling.

She rapped sharply on the car window when she finally found it, startling Derek awake. How he managed to sleep through that noise, she would never know.

......

Emily woke up suddenly with a scream.

Disoriented, she whipped her head around frantically. Patrons of the little breakfast cafe were staring at her in irritation. Derek sat across from her, trying not to laugh as he flagged down a waitress and ordered her another cup of coffee.

“Bad dream, princess?” he asked.

“I was back in the cemetery,” she mumbled between sips of coffee that wasn't quite cool enough to drink yet, just for something to do with her hands. “I looked at its face... It was like some kind of goat creature thing? It was staring into my eyes like it knew I would look. Then it started making that noise...”

“Maybe you should take a break from these games,” he suggested, looking just a little worried about her.

She knew she wasn't going to do that. She changed the subject, “Hey, I forgot about your money. They gave me all sorts of weird shit like an old key, a frayed ribbon, and a rubber ball. They're supposed to have turned into money by now.”

She dug around in her pocket, only to find it empty. She checked her other pocket. Then, thinking she'd remembered wrong, she checked the pockets of the jacket she was still wearing. Nothing...

“Don't worry about it,” Derek shrugged. She didn't miss the look on his face that seemed to say he was worried about her sanity.

She hadn't imagined those hands, she was sure of it...


	10. Chapter 10

Tonight was the third night Emily had awoken around midnight from nightmares.

It was the same nightmare every time. She was back in the cemetery with her bag of salt, staring into the eyes of some kind of demon.

Sometimes during the day, she felt someone or something staring at her. And sometimes, if it was completely silent, she thought she could hear that unearthly sound in the distance.

They were calling her back to the cemetery. They wanted more salt.

She wasn't sure she would survive another night there. She wasn't yet desperate enough to try.

There were plenty of rituals promising protection that she could try first, on the off chance that something she'd encountered that night was following her.

Her mother was once again gone for a few days, so she had the house to herself, allowing her the freedom to summon things without fear of anyone else's presence screwing up things. She knew that her mother had any clue what she was doing, she'd likely never leave her alone for a second for the rest of her life.

This particular ritual promised greater rewards the less time it took you to complete, but she was really only concerned with her physical safety, so she planned to take as much time as she could get. The house was so big, she was sure to need all of it.

At 9PM, she lit her candle (she briefly wondered how much money she'd spent on candles in the last several weeks) and went out to her backyard. It was windy that night and she had to relight the candle a few times before she could get started.

Into the dark emptiness of the night and the vast emptiness of the wealthy suburbs, she whispered, “But who will scare the crows away?”

Over and over she whispered it, until an emotionless voice behind her answered, “That's not your biggest problem.”

Without a backward glance, she went back inside and locked the door behind her. She wasn't sure if the lock would stop the Man in the Field should she fuck up, but she certainly wasn't going to make it any easier for him by leaving it unlocked.

She grabbed her grandmother's old crucifix off the wall where it hung, in a constant reminder of Father Guimino and everyone else who disapproved of her every life choice. She took it into the small bathroom off the hallway and rested it on the counter. This was the only fail-safe should something go wrong and she tried not to think about the doubt in the back of her mind that pointed out that a crucifix had never protected her before.

Her plan was to start on the ground floor and work her way up.

When she'd read about the ritual online, she had thought to herself, _'How hard can it possibly be to close everything?'_

Now, standing in the middle of the kitchen, she nearly burst into tears of frustration, silently cursing her naivety.

When she started the ritual, everything in the entire house that could be closed had burst open. Closing each and every one had seemed simple enough in theory, but her thinking had been limited to doors and windows and closets and drawers. The sheer magnitude of things she had overlooked washed over her like a tidal wave.

In trying to protect herself from one monster, she might have seriously fucked herself over by inviting another one upon her...

Every single item in the fridge was open. Every spice had lost its lid. Every Ziploc bag was unzipped. She lost nearly twenty minutes trying to match every Tupperware container to a lid, cursing under her breath the entire time.

She was in the laundry room closing bottles of household cleaners when she first spotted the watcher. He was always in the corner of her vision, never directly in her line of sight. He looked unassuming enough, like an old farmer with skin the color of cement. She imagined his face must be frightful since he was never to be looked directly at. She didn't have time to dwell on him, though, he was just there to make sure she didn't miss anything, a referee of sorts.

Somewhere outside was the one she needed to worry about. The Man in the Field. She was avoiding closing the windows for fear of accidentally seeing him. If you saw him, he in turn saw you...

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she muttered as she crouched in the bathroom, screwing bottles of nail polish closed and putting caps back on toothpaste tubes. She decided that once this ordeal was over, she was going through and culling her collection of make up and toiletries.

She was really glad she hadn't gotten greedy with the rewards because she was no longer sure three hours was going to be enough time.

 _'When did mother get so many purses?'_ she wondered as she refastened each one.

 _'Jesus, fuck, there are a lot of damn windows in this place,'_ she thought as she shut and locked each one.

 _"How the hell did we accumulate so many boxes when we move all the fucking time!?”_ she shouted to the empty attic. At that point, her tears of frustration started to spill over.

It was five to midnight and she could think of nothing else that could open and close. She had closed everything she'd come across that was obviously opened and even more that would not have been obvious. She _hadn't_ looked at the Man in the Field. She hadn't seen the watcher in awhile.

She was 75% sure she had gotten everything and even if she hadn't, there wasn't time left to do anything about it, aside from wait and see if she woke up the next day.


	11. Chapter 11

That night the dream changed.

She raced through the house aimlessly, knowing she needed to be doing something, but not knowing what it was. A shadow moved outside the window and when she went to see what it was, she saw a cemetery spreading endlessly into the distance.

It was the cemetery of her previous dreams, expect for one difference. A cross about ten feet tall stood in the middle of the grassy expanse.

No... Not a cross...a post for a scarecrow. A scarecrow that had already climbed off its post and was staring directly at her. It had a human body, except for limbs that were nearly twice as long as normal and a cow's skull for a head.

Inherently, she knew this was the Man in the Field.

She blinked and he was gone. He was coming for her...

When she woke up, there was fleeting movement in the corner of her eye.

She didn't have the time to dwell on the dream and what it might have meant, though. Through some kind of miracle, her mother had agreed to let her hold a Halloween party for a few people. She had no idea _why_ her mother had agreed since she very much hated parties and teenagers and all things enjoyable...mostly, she figured she was just glad Emily was doing something _normal_ for once.

She had gone all out in decorating the house, then wondered if decorations would be considered juvenile, but left them up anyway. The cook had offered to make up some Halloween themed foods, but she knew that would _definitely_ cross the line into cheesy, so she'd said no. But seeing the look of disappointment in his eyes, she had agreed to cupcakes that looked like spiderwebs and cauldrons.

The real attraction, she knew, was that she agreed to perform a ritual and someone would be in the room to witness it.

She was actually kind of nervous this time. She'd done rituals with other people before, but this one relied on the other person not fucking up to keep both of them safe and she trusted very few people in the first place, let alone with her life...

She had wanted to do the Channel Infinity ritual, since having other people nearby gave better results, but she wasn't allowed to speak of them ever and she knew everyone wanted a spectacle, so she'd been forced to choose a much more dramatic game.

Derek was the first to arrive, with both his sisters tagging along (Emily had invited them, but she hadn't expected them to show up, seeing as they were both several years older – she would later learn it was because Derek often talked about her and they wanted to see who had enraptured him so).

“A football jersey is _not_ a costume,” Emily scolded him, her plastic vampire fangs slipping around in her mouth with her words.

“It's not _my_ football jersey,” he retorted. “Wearing your formal vampire outfit isn't a costume either.” He stuck his tongue out at her.

“Are you suggesting I'm a vampire?” she asked, one brow raised, unimpressed.

“I think it's pretty obvious that I am.”

Emily rolled her eyes and she thought she heard one of his sisters whisper a smug _'I told you so...'_ to the other.

......

Emily didn't want to play 'hard mode'. She didn't want a lot of things. But she also didn't want to be friendless and anonymous for the rest of her high school career.

She figured it probably wasn't _that_ serious of a risk. She hoped.

Spencer wriggled out from behind her TV where he was hooking up some wires that would allow everyone to see what was happening via the video camera set up in the ritual room. Emily had been a little surprised that he'd showed up – she'd figured he'd been too freaked out by what happened with the Red Book.

He adjusted one of his plastic Spock ears that was sitting crooked. He squeaked a little as Derek clapped a hand on his shoulder unexpectedly as he announced that he was finished.

“Kevin's almost done setting things up!” Penelope exclaimed excitedly, the bells on her gypsy costume jingling with her every movement. Emily had wanted to point out that she'd met real Romani people and that wasn't how they dressed, but had resisted the urge. Spencer on the other hand, had not (Penelope had stopped his rant by kissing him on the cheek and telling him how cute he was as he blushed fiercely red).

Emily had never met Kevin. She'd heard the name, but hadn't spoken to him, so he counted as a stranger and would be assisting her tonight.

“I hope you haven't gotten too attached to Kevin,” Emily said, only half joking, “We'll probably both be slashed to ribbons tonight.”

Penelope giggled and pinched Emily's cheek. “My little Emo-ly,” she teased, “Your outlook is as black as your soul.”

Kevin appeared at her side at that moment, wrapping his arms around Penelope. Emily was still trying to figure out what he was dressed as – she figured it was some sort of video game reference she'd never get if she had a million guesses. “All done, babe. Am I gonna die tonight?”

Penelope laughed as if it was the cutest thing she'd ever heard. “Maybe just a little.” She winked. “If you do, I promise you can haunt me until I die and then we can haunt people together.” They were sickeningly sweet in Emily's opinion.

“As long as you don't look at the wall, we'll be fine,” Emily interrupted their cutesy cooing. “Probably.”

Together, they went into what her mother called the lyceum (which was essentially a ballroom that they'd never had reason to use).

“Put your back against the wall,” Emily ordered, “And don't fucking stop touching it.” He shrank back against the wall as if he was a little afraid of her which pleased her more than she cared to admit.

On the back of her hand, she'd written the command that would start the game. The instructions said not to use a language that was your primary one, but she wasn't clear whether that meant your first language or any language that you were fluent in, so to be safe she'd looked up the pronunciation in German since she didn't speak a word of it.

 _“Die Wand läuft zu mir, und ich füttere sie,”_ she announced, hoping it was correct.

The room was completely dark and no movement was immediately apparent, so it wasn't entirely clear whether the game had started or not. In the few moments of hesitation, the silence was broken by the sound of nails skittering across the hardwood floor.

“There!” Kevin exclaimed, swinging his flashlight beam in the direction of the sound.

Emily moved in that direction, a little warily of potential teeth and sharp claws. The flashlight beam bounced around near her to illuminate the cups on the floor hiding pieces of cat food.

She thought she felt something brush against her ankle and she jumped a little before realizing it was a cup she'd knocked over. She grabbed the piece of cat food and bounded across the room to the saucer where she was to deposit it. She wasn't sure if the entity would try to steal the food from her in the process and the slightest noise had her flinching.

Somewhere nearby a plastic cup skittered across the floor as if batted away violently. “Don't shine the light directly on it!” Emily reminded. “How many pieces did you hide?” she asked, counting the food in the saucer blindly.

“Five pieces, ten cups!” Kevin answered, voice shaky. “Where's the thing? You said it won't attack me, right?”

“Shhh!” she snapped, trying to remember which cups she'd already looked under. Somewhere close there was a crunching sound as the being ate the missing piece. Now all she had to do was keep the saucer away from the being until the ritual ended, which sounded easy enough, except that she was playing keep away with something large and invisible and clawed.

The flashlight beam was flickering wildly around the room, making her feel dizzy. “God dammit, Kevin, I need to see where I'm going!” she shouted in irritation.

“You said not to shine it on the thing!” he retorted.

“It doesn't matter anymore!” she snapped back. She heard him huff distantly and she was pretty sure he was never coming to another one of her parties.

She could feel scratches burning along her legs, but was feeling fairly confident in her dodging abilities. She had no idea how much longer she was going to have to do this though.

“Watch out for the footstool!” Kevin warned her a split second before she saw it and as she went to vault over it, something caught the hem of her cape and she stumbled, feet catching awkwardly in the legs of the stool.

She shouted in pain, but her attention was quickly diverted as hot sour breath washed over her face. The sound of screaming floated through the wall from an adjoining room. What felt like a paw deliberately batted her face so that her neck was exposed.

For a moment, she was certain it was all over and at least everyone at the party would have a good story to tell...then Kevin screwed up. She heard his shoes slapping against the floor and suddenly the weight pressing her into the floor shifted away.

“Dammit, Kevin!” she yelled, searching her pockets desperately for the knife. She guessed she had about five seconds left to use the fail-safe. With a trembling hand, she sliced her forearm and bled into the now empty saucer, then smashed it on the floor.

She was doubled over, breathing heavily when the door slammed open and half a dozen party guests rushed in.

“Is it gone?” someone asked.

“Jesus Christ, what was that?” someone else asked, voice several octaves too high.

“Wow, that's a lot of blood...” came a third voice.

At first, she thought they were talking about Kevin and she went to stand up to check on him. A hand gently urged her back to the floor and she looked up, realizing they were talking about her.

Several sets of eyes were looking down at her. “I'm okay,” she started to insist, despite the fact that her legs were bleeding fairly heavily. “Oh, that reminds me, save some of that blood, I need to use it to wash the cups so the game doesn't start again in six hours.”


	12. Chapter 12

Luckily, she hadn't needed stitches, though she did go through quite a few bandages. Unluckily, when she'd tripped over the stool, she'd twisted her ankle quite badly and now needed an air cast. When her mother asked how she'd hurt herself, of course she'd lied.

She spent the following several weeks more or less trapped in the ordinary. She didn't think it wise to attempt any rituals while she was injured and unable to run or fight for her life should it be necessary. 

Derek finally convinced her to come watch one of his football games. She felt surprisingly normal and All-American, surrounded by half the school and not being the center of attention. She liked the constant swell of noise and the bustling crowd – it made her feel safe and it drowned out the echo of the shrieking that had burned itself into her consciousness that night in the graveyard.

Afterwards, she had dinner with Derek's family. His mother cooked up a meal large enough to feed at least twice as many people and kept bemoaning how skinny Emily was. It was a nice change of pace from eating silent meals across the too-big-for-two-people table with her mother (and that was when they ate together at all). After dinner, his mother asked her a million questions about her life and all the places she'd lived and then proceeded to pull out Derek's baby pictures. It was all horribly cliche and adorably _normal_. 

Derek kept shooting her a lopsided grin and each time the image of Lady Spades flashed across her mind.

Fran invited her over for Thanksgiving dinner with their family, wordlessly implying how happy she was that Derek had such a cultured influence in his life (and not wordlessly adding that maybe she could teach him some table manners). Emily had never had a family Thanksgiving dinner and had often wondered if it was everything TV commercials made it out to be. Unfortunately, her father had already bought her a plane ticket to New York so that she could spend the holiday with him; it was the one time of year he made sure to be State-side to see her.

......

When she spent the holiday with her father, she knew exactly what to expect. He would spend the first day of her visit going all out to give her his attention: they'd visit a museum or the zoo or some other attraction she was probably a little too old to really enjoy, they'd eat at some ritzy foodie joint, he'd take her to the ballet, and they'd get ice cream late in the evening and he'd ask about all the things he'd know if he saw her more than once a year. If she was really lucky, he'd even turn off his phone for a few hours.

He'd spend the next several days shut in his office, leaving her money and telling her to entertain herself, which suited her just fine. She had planned to use the trip for a ritual anyway and she wasn't any keener on explaining herself to her father than she was her mother.

It was different than most rituals, in that the most dangerous part of it was wandering around New York alone. The being she hoped to make contact with was something called a Celestial Anchorite which, as best she could determine from the limited sources she'd found, seemed to be some kind of lesser angelic being.

She meandered through the city with no particular destination in mind and money for a cab in her pocket for when she inevitably got lost and needed a ride home, waiting for a building to catch her attention, whatever that meant.

She was twirling a too small ring around her right index finger, between the first and second knuckles. When she met the Anchorite, she would give the ring to it as a gift. Her father had given her the ring when she was six years old, a purity ring, though he hadn't said so in so many words. She didn't feel right keeping it anymore, after everything that had happened in Rome and at least this way, she got something out of it.

The building she eventually decided on was made of a pinkish white stone and had flowering vines creeping along the facade; she'd chosen it because the street number – three two five – was what her due date would have been.

Knock on four doors at random was the next step. When she knocked on the fourth door, something answered. It was entirely nondescript in appearance and yet, somehow, it had the most interesting face she'd ever seen. It appeared entirely sexless, but was magnificently beautiful. She inherently knew that this was a Celestial Anchorite, but she followed through with the last step since rituals were nothing if not standing on precedence.

“How can you say, 'We are wise, for we have the law of the Lord,' when actually the lying pen of the scribes has handled it falsely?” she asked, not entirely sure what the phrase meant, but liking the way it sounded on her tongue.

The being responded, “The wise will be put to shame; they will be dismayed and trapped. Since they have rejected the word of the Lord, what kind of wisdom do they have?” Then, it invited her inside.

While the being itself was unremarkable, its home was a breathtaking monument to the wonders of the ages. Renaissance art hung on the walls, the shelves were lined with books that looked straight out of Alexandria, and she was fairly sure she saw at least one solid gold Egyptian artifact.

While she took all this in, the Anchorite was bustling around like a flustered hen, clearing crinkling documents off the couch to make room for her to sit down. Somewhere a kettle whistled, though she didn't remember it starting the water boiling.

At its urging, she sat down primly on the sofa, smoothing out the skirt of her formal dress. It pressed the mug of tea into her hands and she took a sip to show her thanks, the flavour reminding her of the strong brews favoured in Saudi Arabia that her nanny used to make for her whenever she had a chest cold while she'd lived there.

The Anchorite sat down next to her with a pen and sheaf of paper in hand, emanating an eager anticipation at having a visitor. She prepared herself to be questioned for hours, though time didn't work there, a little wary of the things it might ask her to reveal of herself.


	13. Chapter 13

Speaking with the Anchorite had left Emily shaken.

All in all, it had been a rather tame experience. No gore, no mortal danger, no threats to her immortal soul...but she left the apartment (How had she left? She couldn't recall leaving the apartment...) feeling deeply unsettled.

She had been warned that Anchorites were very lonely and would try to tempt her to stay. She'd also been warned that accepting any of its offers was tantamount to forfeiting her life. She hadn't realized how extremely tempting its offers would be.

She'd been very close to accepting its offer. She had successfully resisted offers of dinner and staying the night, even when gold had started raining from the ceiling. The offer to learn all the knowledge lost in the destruction of the Library of Alexandria had been much harder to turn down.

It wasn't until the being had started shrieking that there was no Heaven, that she had doomed herself and her unborn child to Hell for all eternity that her resolve started to waver and she bit down on her lip to keep from sobbing audibly at the threat of Baby being tortured until the end of time for her sins.

The being latched in on that threat and promised to save her child's soul if she only promised to stay a little while longer.

She knew it was lying. It was making up anything it could to tempt her to stay so it wouldn't have to be alone. But she was also weak right now.

She'd run from the apartment rather than risk giving in. She didn't get an answer to her question as she'd set out to do – at the moment, she couldn't even remember what her question was. She also didn't say goodbye and she hoped she hadn't offended the Anchorite too badly.

Emily ran for several blocks, flat shoes slipping off her heels and causing her to stumble awkwardly, attracting stares. Finally she found an empty public bathroom and ducked inside, out of breath. She was regretting her decision to wear velvet as the fabric of her dress stuck uncomfortably to the sweat along her spine.

She dug around in her purse looking for her cigarettes, hoping that would calm her down. She lit the cigarette and sat down on the lid of the toilet, resting her head in one of her hands until she stopped trembling.

The small space quickly filled up with smoke, the reflection of the burning cherry almost hypnotizing through the haze. As she got closer and closer to the filter, she watched her reflection change slowly, darkening, the cherry seeming to become two separate red dots.

She told herself she was being silly, that her eyes were playing tricks on her from the day's stress. She'd been chasing ghosts so long her mind was starting to invent them out of nowhere, which called into question the authenticity of everything she'd been doing of late.

The smoke in the room started to condense into solid form – a squat little torso with awkwardly spindly limbs. It blinked at her a few times, then asked for a cigarette, a serpent-like tongue flicking out as it spoke.

Emily was too stunned to do anything other than obey, pulling one out of the pack still sticking out of her purse. She held it out to the being, then reached back into her purse for her lighter. When she produced it after a moment of searching, she turned to light the creature's cigarette, only to find that it had somehow lit it on its own and she doubted very much it had a lighter on its person.

She sat there staring into the creature's red eyes in silence as it smoked languidly and it stared right back at her, its shrivelled lips curling into a smile around the cigarette.

"What...what are you?" she eventually found the courage to ask.

"A fucking unicorn, what do I look like?" the being retorted sarcastically. "I'm a shade," it added after a long exhalation of smoke.

Emily bit at her lip. Her knowledge of shades was limited to a passing mention or two and one ritual that suggested merging your shadow with one (apparently afterwards you were a threat to children and would only want to eat raw meat, so she'd stayed far away from that one). Neither had been all that clear on what exactly a shade was, but she thought asking might be considered rude.

"Having fun yet?" it asked her with a smirk like it knew exactly what she'd been running from. "Those Anchorites are so holier-than-thou, thinking they're better than everyone because they know shit." Its voice was gravelly and dry, like brittle leaves across a sidewalk.

She shrugged. "I don't know, it didn't seem that bad. Until the end, I mean..."

It laughed sharply, its laughter like those leaves crunching beneath a thick-soled boot. "You should have agreed to stay...you'd be safe from what you've summoned."

She wasn't sure what the shade was referring to. She'd summoned a number of things lately, but she'd sent all of them right back where they'd come from...as far as she knew. She tried to think back to the last ritual that had gone wrong.

Things had gone badly on Halloween, but she'd activated the fail-safe, so she didn't think that was it. She still sometimes heard the noise from the graveyard, but she hadn't actually _summoned_ anything that night. The only thing she could think of was the spirit she'd spoken to with the Red Book, but wasn't sure how it could do her any harm after she'd completed the banishment ritual.

The shade watched her closely as she thought, amusement on its face. The thought occurred to her then that the creature could lie to her and perhaps was just trying to scare her, but she didn't know what it had to gain from it.

She glanced up at the shade with a frown, trying to figure out what it was after – all spirits had a price, a goal, a mission. She doubted it was just here to bum a smoke off her and it would dissipate as soon as it was finished.

Something twisted in her gut. Where it had been an amorphous smoky blur earlier, it was now defined and very nearly solid. The way it was grinning with its too small, too pointy teeth gave her the feeling that it had some ideas about what it would do to her once it was fully form and she was sure none of them would be pleasant.

A burst of panic exploded in her chest. When she'd set out earlier, she hadn't planned on meeting anything that might wish her harm (except perhaps a petty street thug looking to mug her and she had pepper spray for that).

Acting on instinct, adrenalin, and her limited knowledge of shades, she leapt up from her seat on the toilet lid, sprung forwards, and awkwardly sort of karate chopped her hand through its head. It was still mostly smoke, so her hand passed right through; its eyes were solid, though, like two red-hot marbles and she gathered them up in her palm.

The shade started screaming and cursing at her, horrible obscenities in languages she'd never heard and were likely as old as time itself. The disembodied eyes were burning her palm, the pain nearly unbearable. She wanted to open her hand and let them fall, but something in her told her that to do so would mean the end of her life.

She pushed the bathroom door open, flooding the inside with light, and the shade's half-formed body dissipated. She set off back towards her father's apartment, this time at a walk because her heart was still pounding dangerously fast and she needed time to settle her jangling nerves. She didn't want her father to notice anything was off with her or he might ask where she'd been and there was no way to explain anything that had happened today in a way that wouldn't call her sanity into question.


	14. Chapter 14

Now, when she slept, she dreamt of being back in the graveyard. She was running. She was _fleeing_. This time, there was barking, drowning out the shrieking pleas for salt. Over her shoulder, she glimpsed a massive hulking dog chasing her. It wasn't just black, it was the color of pure darkness, the color of a complete absence of light. Except for its eyes which glowed red with the depths of hell. Judging by the barking, it wasn't the only one...and it was gaining on her.

She stumbled and it was upon her before she could blink. The others quickly caught up and she was surrounded, unable to move without a pair of jaws nipping warningly at her throat. They kept her pinned until their master came for her.

She woke up just as the ring of Hell hounds parted for the Man in the Field.

Each time she awoke, the burn scars on her palm seared with pain. She had an uneasy feeling of being watched when they were exposed. Whatever was hunting her was using them as beacons to find her.

After a week of wrapping her hands in the sheets at night to hide herself, she bought a pair of leather driving gloves and wore them daily. With them on, she felt less like she was being stalked.

They didn't help with the shadows that seemed to hold dark shapes that moved when they shouldn't or the darkness deep inside mirrors that fled when she looked too closely.

......

Despite Emily's protests and lies about having plans, Penelope had dragged her along to do their Christmas shopping. Apparently, JJ had an indoor soccer tournament that weekend, which explained why she'd had to resort to the back-up friend, Emily thought.

Emily quite liked the effervescent blonde, in spite of herself. She reminded Emily of the nanny she'd had when she was six years old; they'd had a complex game of make-believe, pretending they were princess spies and every month they had a new mission to complete without the enemy (her mother) finding out.

Penelope had raved about Emily's new driving gloves when she'd noticed, saying how much she looked like Black Widow, then begging her to say something in Russian. Emily had to make up a lie about her father telling her it was all the rage overseas where he'd been working (she was a little surprised when Penelope bought the story because despite having the money to keep up with modern fashion, Emily was hopelessly unstylish). Her palm burned sharply inside her glove and she felt a flush of hot fear move through her as somewhere distantly a dog barked angrily.

They spent the next twenty minutes assigning superhero identities to everyone in their friend group (this was the first time Emily knew she was considered part of the group), which mostly consisted of Emily smiling and agreeing with Penelope's assessment to avoid appearing too nerdy.

Emily wasn't that into shopping and she didn't actually have any shopping to do since she wouldn't see her father and her mother didn't want anything she could give her, but Penelope insisted on dragging her through three different malls nonetheless. Emily ended up mostly carrying bags and buying coffee because even if she didn't enjoy shopping, she appreciated the company.

Penelope had four younger brothers (which sounded equal parts fun and horrible to Emily) and she had saved up all year to spoil them with gifts because her parents were hippies and didn't buy into the whole 'materialistic capitalist dogma holiday', in Penelope's words.

While Penelope debated whether number of pieces or the associated movie franchise made the best Lego kit, Emily distractedly wandered off down the doll aisle. Dolls had gotten so much cooler since she was young enough to play with them, she thought, and then immediately felt ancient.

A Barbie dressed like a ballerina caught her eye and the memory of Charlotte talking about how much she loved dolls flashed through her mind. Maybe Charlotte, who lived inside the mirror, would know what created the hovering darkness that haunted her reflection and how to banish it...

She had the room all set up and ready for the ritual when she got a phone call from John. His parents found out he was flunking two of his classes and he wasn't allowed to go out until he got his grades up. This put a significant kink in her plans...

She needed a second person, but didn't know who else to call on – Matthew was definitely not an option, Derek was at football practice, and she didn't really feel comfortable enough with anyone else to let them overhear the conversation she wanted to have.

She was desperate for a solution to the presence stalking her reflection and didn't want to postpone the ritual. Her mother had a large porcelain doll the size of a small child and while it freaked her out quite a bit because it was so lifelike, she felt fairly sure that Charlotte, who had lived during the fifteenth century, would be fooled into thinking it a real person.

"We want to play Charlotte's Web," she announced, keeping her eyes on the mirror and noticing that even in the pitch black room, there was still a haze of even deeper darkness watching, waiting.

When she'd called on Charlotte the first time, it had taken only a few moments for her to appear in the periphery of Emily's vision. This time, it was taking considerably longer. She wasn't afraid because she knew Charlotte to be gentle and sweet, so she knew it wasn't in response to her anxiety.

Was it possible that whatever was tracking her reflection was scaring off Charlotte or maybe even actively preventing her from showing up?

She felt a burst of panic in her chest that maybe she had unintentionally harmed the little girl and as she was considering ending the ritual, she heard a noise behind her. It sounded like heavy feet stomping angrily and briefly, she wondered if she'd awoken her mother.

Holding her breath, she counted to ten, waiting for the door to open and a berating to follow. When the scolding didn't come, the tension fell out of her shoulders for a brief moment before the stomping continued.

She whipped the flashlight beam around the mirror, looking for what was making the sound. The Barbie seemed undisturbed. With a cautious voice, Emily asked, "Charlotte? Are you there? I need your help..."

The stomping stopped abruptly.

"Charlotte?" Emily asked again, hopeful.

All of a sudden, something forcefully impacted the back of her head. She yelped in pain, rubbing the spot. She looked down to see what had hit her and realized it was the Barbie. Fear caught somewhere in her throat.

"Charlotte?" she asked, tremulously this time. "I'm sorry if I offended you somehow..."

There was a sound that vaguely resembled screaming, just on the edge of being outside the range of human hearing. The sound rankled her and set her teeth on edge. This must be what a ghost tantrum looked like.

Against every bit of good sense she possessed, Emily turned around to see where Charlotte was, hoping to talk her down from her fit.

Her heart plummeted into her stomach as she spotted the little girl halfway up the wall like a spider, her neck at an impossible angle. Charlotte met her eyes and let out another scream, then scuttled along the wall until she was clinging to the ceiling.

Emily bit down on her own scream, hoping very much to avoid escalating the situation. "Ch-Charlotte? It's Emily – do you remember me? I just want to talk..." She'd been in her share of ridiculous situations lately, but this – negotiating with a ghost – truly took the top spot.

The girl moved along the ceiling, each limb seeming to function completely independently from the others, distorting her body grotesquely. Emily slowly backed away from it, afraid that if the opportunity arose, Charlotte would drop down on her from above and attack her.

Charlotte screamed a third time, louder and shriller than before. There was the sound of electricity surging through the wires in the walls and somewhere distantly, Emily was sure she heard the sound of the breaker blowing. Her flashlight suddenly flickered and died.

In the dark, there was the distinct sound of scuttling movement, impossible track because it sounded as if it came from everywhere at once. Emily flicked the light switch hopefully a few times, to no avail. In desperation, she pulled her lighter out of her pocket, needing to get eyes on the angry spirit.

When the flint struck a spark, all hell broke loose. Charlotte produced a shriek unlike any sound Emily had ever heard. She seemed to jump from one surface to another, the movement in between sudden and blurry to Emily's eyes. Loose items in the room started whipping about as if caught in a cyclone and more than once she had to duck to avoid being struck in the head.

Electricity crackled through the walls again and Emily wasn't sure if she'd imagined the way the walls seemed to glow blue and spark.

Without warning, a nearby smoke detector went off and the acrid smell of smoke seeped in under the door. She let out a stream of curses; not only did she not get an answer as to how to defeat the plaguing darkness, she might have burned down her house...

She fled the room, hoping to catch the source of the smoke before anything important ignited and was halfway down the hall before realizing she'd forgotten to end the ritual.

She ran back, shouting, "Goodbye, Charlotte!" repeatedly and hoping to God that she hadn't escaped.


	15. Chapter 15

They'd been very lucky in that the only thing actually damaged was some wiring and a few fuses, a little charring on the wall housing the breaker. Nothing that couldn't be repaired by an electrician and some paint.

Emily had accepted that she wasn't going to get an answer and covered all the mirrors in her room, outright refusing to go into any room with an uncovered mirror while it was dark. She hoped that if she ignored the shadow, it would ignore her.

Unfortunately, her strange behaviour had finally caught her mother's attention who had then made her an appointment with a psychiatrist.

Emily supposed it could have been worse...she could have bypassed mental illness and gone straight to possession the way Matthew's parents seemed to be leaning.

If her mother who was notorious for either being blind to or blatantly ignoring her well-being had become suspicious enough to actually take action, her behaviour must have been genuinely worrying. She decided that meant the universe was telling her it was time to throw in the towel.

It was probably for the best that she did; her days were plagued with sudden movement just at the edges of her vision, never able to get a clear picture of what was haunting her. Even in her sleep she wasn't free and just when she thought she'd encountered the worst nightmare yet, a new horror awaited.

But before she quit for good, she'd promised several people that she would play a game that had been making its way around the internet, shared on social media and blogs devoted to the paranormal, opinion equally split between the stories being real and fake, but no one willing to attempt to verify.

Whenever she'd seen it mentioned, it was usually accompanied with pleas that the reader never attempt it because it was so dangerous. Of course, she'd never really been one for doing what she was told and honestly, she doubted it could possibly be any more dangerous that anything else she'd attempted.

With less than a week before her appointment, she didn't have time to painstakingly prepare and await the exact right moment. But she knew where there was an abandoned house with a wooden door that had been appropriated by teenage vandals that would serve her purpose. (And if the Midnight Man happened to survive past the time he was supposed to disappear, at least he wouldn't be left haunting her house.)

It was a half hour to midnight when she broke into the derelict house (did it count as breaking in if it was left unlocked and unguarded?). There didn't appear to be anyone else inside, apart from a rather obese raccoon nesting in the wall where the Sheetrock had crumbled away.

The candle flickered and guttered with the drafts as she precisely timed her knocking, casting shadows on the blood-stained invitation sitting in front of the door. She briefly hoped the wind sputtering through the old house wasn't going to become a problem.

At the stroke of midnight, she blew out and relight her candle, pausing briefly to consider how long the three and a half hours in front of her would seem to be, then started wandering.

She moved through the house with her back to the wall, skirting along the edges of the rooms, as that seemed the best way not to be snuck up on. She was briefly thankful for all the broken windows and holes in the walls that let in light from the streetlamps outside, keeping the darkness somewhat at bay.

The first hour or so (she tried not to check her watch, afraid of being caught off guard, but she was actually kind of bored), there seemed to be nothing happening. Every once in a while, a car driving past would cast moving silhouettes across the wall, but that seemed to be the only movement in the house. She was actually a little disappointed and she was very nearly ready to debunk the whole thing.

The noises started slowly, once she'd let her defenses down. She told herself that the sounds were from the raccoon scratching around in its nest. She moved through the house in search of the raccoon to reassure herself, feeling like she was in a rather cliche horror movie where suspense builds only to reveal a cat jumping out of the darkness.

Was it just her imagination or had the house gotten darker? She thought she heard movement behind her and when she whipped around, the candle went out.

She pulled her lighter out of her pocket, hands trembling a little from the adrenalin as she tried to relight the candle. She counted to six under her breath before it caught light.

When she glanced up, she thought she saw a shadowy figure retreating. It was tall – far too tall to be made by any normal human – it had to bend nearly in half to avoid the ceiling. She blinked once, twice, and it was gone.

She backed out of the room, abandoning her quest for the raccoon and hoping it wasn't going to jump out at her at an inopportune moment. She hadn't realized she was breathing hard until that moment as her breath caused the candle flame to flicker and she spent a few seconds trying to slow it.

She moved up the stairs on her hands and knees, trying to be as silent as possible, biting down on her lip to keep from uttering a curse every time the old floorboards groaned under her. On the top step, she grazed her hand across the sharp edge of a broken board and was unable to help the cry she let out as she felt blood wash across her palm.

Abandoning the pretense of slow calculated movement, she ran into the nearest room and wedged herself behind the remains of what appeared to be a smashed credenza. She examined her wound as closely as possible by the light of her candle, wiping blood on her jeans and trying to dig out all the splinters.

She pulled one of her gloves out of her satchel and stuffed it with tissues as a quick temporary fix to stop the blood until she could properly examine the wound. She had a feeling the Midnight Man didn't give time-outs for medical emergencies.

A chill had started creeping into the room, bringing with it the oppressive darkness and she knew she'd been found again. She dug out her lighter again and briefly considered setting the shambles of the credenza aflame, but decided arson wasn't exactly going to make her psychiatrist think her sane.

She crawled out from her hiding place, not wanting to be trapped and unable to flee should she need to.

The Midnight Man was standing in the doorway, illuminated by light that seemed to emanate from nowhere. His body seemed to be made of pure darkness and nothingness. She couldn't identify his features, just the general shape of his body, particularly the too long fingers reaching out towards her, five joints in each one.

The candle flame seemed to be drawn into its hand, like it was sucking in the light, and the room suddenly went dark.

A deep echoing voice started counting, getting closer and closer. Emily flicked the lighter, trying to get the candle relit, but she was having a hard time getting it to work with her unbandaged left hand.

The Midnight Man was up to eight when the lighter slipped out of her hand and smashed on the floor, lighter-fluid going everywhere. Her heart sank.

She dug in her satchel, searching for the salt that was the only fail-safe for failing to relight the candle within ten seconds.

Her hands were shaking so hard she could barely form a circle of salt around her without spilling it everywhere.

The dark figure halted in its tracks, hand scant inches from her face, stopped by the barrier of salt. She didn't breathe for what felt like hours, just staring into the shadowy face where its eyes should be. It should have gotten her – it had the capability to move inhumanly fast, it should have had no trouble reaching her before the ten seconds were up, so why hadn't it?

She still had almost an hour left before 3:33AM when the monster would leave, so she created a bigger circle that would allow her to sit down comfortably as she waited.

The chill created by the Midnight Man seemed to circle around her, like a vulture circling a dying animal, waiting for the moment to strike and feast.

Sitting there, she was suddenly overcome with drowsiness and she struggled to stay awake, sure that to fall asleep would invite the Midnight Man upon her. She would very nearly fall asleep, then snap awake a split second later.

During one such moment, she opened her eyes to find she was not alone in the house. Her first thought was that someone had wandered in off the street looking for a place to sleep for the night and she was struck with worry that the Midnight Man would think them to have entered the game and attack.

She opened her mouth to warn them to leave this place and not come back tonight, when uneasiness washed over her. Something about the girl standing with her back turned struck her as unsettlingly familiar.

After a few moments, she realized the uneasiness was because the girl, at least from the back, was a nearly perfect doppelganger for herself, right down to the slightly uneven edge of her hair where she'd had to cut out a large knot. She wore a butter yellow sundress that Emily wouldn't have been caught dead in and her feet were bare.

"Hello?" Emily asked, trying to get the figure to turn around so she could see her face and hopefully make the creepy feeling choking her subside. "Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

The girl started to turn and Emily knew she should look away, knew she wasn't going to like what was coming, but found herself unable to.

When she finally got a clear view of the girl's face, she tasted bile and if she hadn't been sitting down already, she feared she may have fallen over in alarm. She was staring into her own horribly disfigured face. Her face had been cut from the both corners of her lips to her ears and when the girl smiled, her skull was clearly visible through the slits. One of her eyeballs dangled down her cheek, attached by a pink tendon and nothing else; every once in awhile, a beetle of some kind would wander out of the empty socket and crawl into the girl's mouth. The most horrific part though, was her other eye which seemed to be overgrown with flesh and where the eye would have been sat a spider the size of a kitten.

After several moments of staring, mouth open in horror, she actually did throw up. As she leaned over gagging, she thought she felt icy cold breath on the back of her neck. She sat up in alarm, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

The girl was still standing in the same spot, unmoving.

"None of this is real," Emily whispered to herself. "This is all in my head. Just a hallucination." She repeated it like a mantra, blinking more than entirely necessary, hoping that she'd open her eyes and the girl would be gone. "This isn't real! I'm not afraid!" she yelled, only lying a little bit, frustrated with being manipulated so easily.

"How about now?" a brittle voice whispered beside her ear.

The girl grabbed the spider and crushed it in her fist until it exploded in a burst of oily black ooze. She then dug her nails into the skin of her face, rending deep bloody furrows into the flesh. Bugs rushed out of the empty eye socket until she seemed more bug than human. She pulled at the dangling eye until the tendon ripped from the socket with a squelching sound like suctioning something wet. She put the eyeball into her mouth and the noise of it exploding as she bit into it was audible; she smiled afterwards and the liquid spilled out of her mouth and down her chin.

Emily stumbled backwards, clapping a hand over her mouth to stifle the screams. As she tumbled backwards, she felt a powerful rush of cold pass through her as she hit the ground, sending pain rushing through her tailbone.

With horror, she realized she'd left the safety of her ring of salt. Before she could react, an alarm split the silence of the night, signalling 3:33AM. She lay down completely, body trembling, biting down on her lip to keep in the ragged sobs bubbling up.


	16. Chapter 16

"C-can you turn it up?" Derek rasped, vocal cords still painfully inflamed from screaming.

His mother increased the volume of the little television hanging over his hospital bed as the news report started.

"Six teenagers are dead and one remains in hospital today after a vicious attack," the reporter announced. "The attacker, an eighth teenager, is in the hospital under psychiatric supervision."

"Maybe we should change the channel," his mother suggested worriedly, but he just shook his head.

"The teens were camping out in the woods when one of them appears to have suffered a psychotic break and attacked her companions. According to reports from the attacker's mother, she appeared to be behaving differently in recent months and was being assessed by a psychiatrist at the time of the attack.

"In our interview with the survivor – Derek Morgan, age sixteen, who suffered wounds to his throat that luckily missed his jugular – he was insistent that this was completely unlike her and she would never have hurt anyone.

"Tune in at eight to see the full interview. Derek is expected to make a full recovery, after extensive surgery to..."

His mother turned off the TV. "I think that's enough. You don't need to be watching that."

"It wasn't her," he insisted. It was something he'd repeated to anyone who would listen in the last few days. "Something else was controlling her. She wouldn't hurt me!"

"No one is saying this was her fault," his mother murmured, patting his arm tenderly. "She's very sick and she couldn't help it."

"You don't understand!" he persisted, "She was possessed! She'd been playing these games... I warned her that she should stop playing, things were following her and she was getting paranoid. She promised she'd stop after one more – I think the last one got her, it was the Midnight Man or something. She was talking differently, acting differently, and...and look at this email she sent me!"

He passed his phone to his mother so she could see for herself. She looked at it, then raised a brow and turned to him with concern. "It's just a bunch of dashes and dots."

"It's Morse code! It says: 'They have me. It's been so long, so long, years maybe. They're torturing me – it hurts, it hurts, I think I'm dying. I need help, please come get me. I'm stuck in an eternal loop and I can't get out. Everything is falling apart and they're laughing at me. They want me to go insane. I can't get out. Don't try to help me. This is a warning. It won't show my words. I can't do anything. I can't get out.' There's a bunch of spelling mistakes and she keeps repeating herself, but it's her!"

"Derek," his mother scolded, suddenly stern. "That's enough. I think your imagination is getting away from you. You've been through a big trauma and your brain is making things up to help you cope with it."

"I'm not!" he insisted. His heart monitor started beeping louder and more insistently. "Why won't you believe me!?"

"Calm down, Derek," his mother tried to soothe him. "You just had surgery and you need rest."

"There's video!" He tried to sit up properly, his stitches pulling painfully in the process and he winced, bringing a hand up to touch the bandages on his neck. "I can show you, I can prove..."

"I believe you, honey," she said, pressing a hand to his chest and forcing him to lie back down with surprising strength.

He knew she was humoring him so the doctors wouldn't have to sedate him. He also knew that he was meeting with a psychiatrist in the morning to talk about the 'incident'. None of that changed that he knew what he'd seen that night in the woods, staring into pure black eyes that weren't those of his friend as she pinned him to the ground and ripped at his throat with her teeth.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel it's important to preface this by urging you to never ever ever ever play any of the games I describe here. I'm purposely not fully detailing the steps or giving the names, but obviously I can't stop anyone from Googling them. Even if you don't believe that these games are real, you don't understand the things you're playing with and you shouldn't take the risk and open yourself up to those things.


End file.
